Pearl Poet |
Biography

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The Pearl Poet is the name scholars have given to the author of Sir Gawainand the Green Knight, though his real name and identity are unknown. The term pearl is borrowed from the title of a shorter poem found within the same manuscript as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He lived in Northwest England in the 14th century. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was most likely composed in the late Middle Ages, between 1375 and 1400.

The Pearl Poet wrote in the Northwest Midland dialect, a style of Middle English that was less influenced by French than the London dialogue in which The Pearl Poet's contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote The Canterbury Tales. The poem belongs to the alliterative revival tradition, meant to evoke the patterns of Old English poetry, rather than the metric poetry that Chaucer wrote. The nature scenery in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is thought to describe the Midlands of England.

As Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows, The Pearl Poet took morality seriously and had a deep religious faith: his poem Pearl is an elegy for a dead child, and two other poems in the same manuscript, Patience and Purity, serve as moral teachings. The religious focus in his work shows the deep connection between religion and art that existed during this period.

The Pearl Poet's works, especially Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, indicate he may have been accustomed to a courtly lifestyle and was familiar with medieval romances, such as "The Romance of the Rose," a French poem structured as a dream allegory about the art of love. His intimate knowledge of the pleasures of hunting and the traditions of wealthy castle life, shown in Sir Gawainand the Green Knight, probably come from experience.